Beck Oliver Loves Me
by samgot13
Summary: Life can surprise us sometimes.


"10."  
Jade taps her foot. She leans against the door. It's cold and the cold seeps through her shirt and makes her scared.  
"9."  
Jade closes her eyes and presses her ear against the cold door. She hears nothing from the other side.  
"8."  
Jade wraps her fingers around the brassy doorknob, also cold, and when she doesn't feel it turning she feels her breathing quicken.  
"7."  
Jade's eyes leak cold fat tears that run down her cheeks in dark mascara tainted streaks.  
"6."  
Jade's stomach churns and she wants to throw up, right here on Vega's stoop. But she doesn't, and that makes her even more scared.  
"5."  
Jade's voice trembles.  
"4."  
Her fingers shake.  
"3."  
Her head pounds.  
"2."  
The tears fall faster.  
"1."  
She shoves her ear to the door. But all she hears is her breath, ragged but heavy.  
She thinks she can hear her heart breaking, too.

/

"So." Tori doesn't look at Jade. She stuffs her hands under her legs, and her bones are being crushed but its all she can do to stop herself from throwing her hands up in the air because finally, finally, Beck can have something more now. Something he really deserves, instead of a girl, lost, scared, so afraid that she clings with all her life to him. "It's over now?"  
Jade picks up her head. Her eyes are wet. "Yeah, Vega," she says with not as much sharpness as there should have been. "It's over." She leans back against the sofa, not even caring that she's at the house of the girl she hates so much and she's lounging on the couch with her.  
Tori sees something small and clear drip off of Jade's chin.  
It leaves a sad, dark circle on Jade's shirt.

/

"There's a restaurant right near my house."

Beck looks at the blonde.

There's nothing in his eyes.

Nothing.

"Oh," Beck says. His voice is dead.

"Yeah," the blonde purrs, twirling a lock of golden hair around her finger.

"Cool," Beck says, and he walks away.

He thinks he sees a pale-faced, raven-haired girl with a million piercings duck into the janitor's closet. But he doesn't know.

Beck turns and walks out of the school.

He drives home and starts to think about his life.

/

"I miss her," Beck cries. His voice is cracking and his skin is blotchy. Tori looks at him, puts a hand on his shoulder.  
"She isn't good for you, Beck." Tori pats his back. "Don't you want a girl who is good for you?"  
"No," Beck whimpers. "I want a girl that is Jade."

/

Jade is sitting on her bed.  
She likes to stare at the ceiling a lot.  
It's brown.  
It's a lot like Beck's hair.  
She likes that.  
And then the phone rings.  
Jade waits a minute, because her muscles are aching, because her heart is aching even more. But then when her dad shouted from downstairs, "Jade, get the stinkin' phone!" she climbs out of bed and picks up the phone from its cradle.  
"Hello?"  
Her voice is quiet. She doesn't talk as loud or as sharp as she used to. She thinks the fire in her has burned out.  
Nothing from the other side.  
This scares Jade, reminds her too much of when she reached "1" and nothing happened.  
"Hello?" Jade says, louder. "Hello?"  
"I need to hear your voice."  
Beck.  
"Oh my God, Beck, you have no idea-"  
The line goes dead.

/

He's been seeing someone else, she knows.  
She's a brunette, a cheerleader, pint-sized and rail-thin. No meat at all. Jade hates her instantly, even more than she hates Vega.  
"She's awful," Jade says to Cat as tears run down her cheeks, as she shoves coffee ice cream into her mouth using the scooper. "She thinks she can give him what I gave him."  
"She can't," Cat says, in her high voice.  
"SHE CAN'T!" Jade shrieks.  
She's crying a lot harder now.

/

"She isn't Jade."  
Andre looks up at Beck, startled. Beck doesn't talk about Jade anymore. At all.  
"Huh?" Andre replies, putting down the magazine. He knows, though, what Beck is talking about, anyone would know.  
"The blonde." Beck closes his eyes, presses his fingers against his forehead. "What's her name?"  
"She's your girlfriend, Beck," Andre reminds him.  
Beck rolls his eyes. "Whatever." He sighs. "Katie. Yeah, that's it."  
"What about her?"  
"Didn't you hear me? She isn't Jade."  
"I know that," Andre told him. "Anybody and everybody knows that Katie, who sings Taylor Swift and writes plays about dogs, not little girls falling in wells, is certainly not Jade."  
"I know, Andre," Beck says. "You aren't getting it." He sighs again. Andre notices Beck has been sighing a lot lately. "She doesn't give the same kind of... kind of... emotion that Jade did." He leans back on his bed and puts his hands over his face. "She doesn't love me like Jade did." He pulls his fingers away and looks right at Andre. "I don't love her like I love Jade."

/

It's just two weeks after Jade's little episode with Cat and she and Beck-of course-are thrown harshly together, alone, and raw and open and susceptible to anything.  
They don't speak.  
They just eat their lunch quietly, on opposite sides of the table.  
Jade thinks it seems as if they're on opposite sides of California.**  
**

/

"We had lunch together," Beck tells him. He has this dreamy look in his eye, not a Beck Oliver look.  
"You had lunch together?" Robbie says, raising his thick eyebrows off his pale face. He runs a hand through his black bush of hair piled atop his head. "What?"  
"Well. No."  
"That's better. Why do you think you did?"  
"Because we sat at the same table. And we ate," says Beck. He grins this goofy smile Robbie's never seen before and walks off.

/

"Beck says you ate lunch together," Robbie tells Jade quickly, backing away before Jade can grab him by the collar of his shirt and leave yet another cotton mark burning on his neck.  
Robbie suddenly realizes Jade doesn't do that anymore. She doesn't seem to do anything really. Everything she does is with and for Cat.  
"He did?" Jade says.  
"Yeah," says Robbie.  
"Well. That's because we did."  
Jade leans back in her seat and looks at Robbie. There's a small smile on her face. Robbie's really, really confused.

/

Jade calls him up. She doesn't know why she does it-no, scratch that, Jade knows perfectly why.  
She misses him.  
She misses him like crazy, with her heart aching wildly with love and pain and memories. She wants him to love her again, she wants to feel loved again.  
She wants to remember him.  
"Beck?" she says finally when she realizes that he-or someone-has picked up.  
"Yeah. Who's this?"  
"Jade."  
"Jade West?"  
"What other Jade do you know?" she asks him. She's kind of scared about the answer.  
"Hi, Jade," Beck says. Jade can hear him smiling over the phone. She starts smiling, too, a big one. One she hasn't done in a while, the one Beck loved. The one that showed every tooth and the faintest hint of the dimple against the creamy white skin of her cheek. The one that brought sparkles to her eyes, and the one that made Beck look at her with so much love.  
She wants-no, she needs that look again.  
"Hi, Beck."  
"I still love you, you know."  
Jade's fingers wrap themselves tighter around the phone. She can't breathe. "What?" she whispers.  
"I still love you."  
"Then why didn't you come to the door that day?" Jade feels something wet and cold drip down her cheeks.  
"Trina was holding me back. Why didn't you come in that day?"  
"Because I thought you would come out." Jade sighs. "I still love you."  
"I know. I see it in your eyes and the way you eat and the way you ignore me every time we're together. I see it everywhere."  
"I love you, Beck."  
"I love you, Jade."  
The line drops dead.  
"I love you, Beck," Jade says again, whispering it to herself until she feels everything pouring from her eyes so all she sees are little blurry chunks of the world, little glimpses of reality, just enough where she can feel all the pain and love and hurt and trust and everything. And she's okay with that.  
Beck Oliver loves her.  
Jade starts crying even harder.  
She glances in the mirror.  
She's smiling, too.


End file.
